OK found my notes, I'll caveat with saying that I'm still learning also and I haven't found the perfect recipe yet either. I'm just eyeballing it and it's hard to be consistent with the homemade jig, so when I started testing only like 1 in 5 would sound just ok, but 1 in 20 would sound really good. The rest just sounded like crap. I'm slowly getting more consistent now that I found roughly what works for me. I number all my diaphragms with a sharpie and keep a little chart with materials used, and rough notes on sound results so I can try narrow down the best combos of materials.
I've only played around with .003, .004, .005 natural latex and .004 yellow. For me the thicker latex seem to give better bull sounds. For me, the single .003 may make some ok cow calls or high pitched location bugles, otherwise seems like you need to double it or go thicker. I've had my best luck (so far) with the .005 natural latex (single or double) or .004 yellow latex (single or double). I haven't tried 3x yet. I've found you don't need very much stretch at all, some of mine I don't stretch at all just make sure the latex is flush & flat, hold in place and crimp it. So maybe start at 0 and slowly work up until you find your sweet spot. Also make sure you know the size/shape you want to cut the tape, if they are all to big or small they will all sound wonky, so you may try testing your sizes/trimming also. Some of the calls work better after you break them in also, so I usually don't trash one until I test it at least twice. I'm mostly using the small crowned frames with adhesive. I also have some small flat frames and narrow frames also but haven't played around to much with them. I might try those narrow frames for cow/calf calls this year.
Hope this helps. It's fun to learn and test what works. I killed my 2022 WY gen bull using a homemade diaphragm and killed a turkey this spring with one of my elk diaphragms, that was pretty cool.
